Hacking the Yamaha DX9 to Turn It into a DX7 (2023)
ajxs.me
ajxs.me
If you find this interesting, I wrote an overview of how I approach these projects: https://ajxs.me/blog/Introduction_to_Reverse-Engineering_Vin...
I'm currently messing around inside the Casio CZ101, another cool 80s digital synth.
I am surprised Yamaha ever created the DX9 given the manufacturing economics. Did they even save a few pennies here and there to create an inferior instrument? I guess even in the early 80s product differentiation was something.
1: https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/nine-times-out-of-ten/791...
80s synth enthusiasts were often young and not particularly rich, so a cut down version wasn't an entirely insane idea. And if it hadn't been cut down enough it would have cannibalised sales of the more expensive synth.
Ironically the opposite happened - many people looked at the DX9, thought "No..." and pushed themselves to their limits financially to get the DX7.
I doubt this was deliberate, but it probably wasn't a net loss for Yamaha.
It's maybe more accurate to think of it as the prototype for the much cheaper budget 4-ops that Yamaha flooded the market with, after the DX7-tier was saturated.
I think you're right about this. I originally thought that maybe removing velocity sensitivity would have been enough, but lots of people would probably have been happy living without it.
> It's maybe more accurate to think of it as the prototype for the much cheaper budget 4-ops that Yamaha flooded the market with, after the DX7-tier was saturated.
I'd genuinely love to know what was going on inside Yamaha after the success of the DX7. There's a lot of information available about the development of the DX7, but I can't find much about what happened after. I'm not sure why there were so many of the 2nd generation 4-operator FM synths: DX21, DX100, DX27, FB01, TX81Z, V50, TQ5, and a bunch of other variants of these. Of these, only the TX81Z has really achieved the same kind of 'iconic' status as the DX7.
The DX21, DX100, DX27, FB01, TX81Z .. product range .. is designed to cover the following use cases: music schools, karaoke bars, normal bars, and hobbyist musicians. In fact, Yamaha's biggest FM-based products (in terms of sales generated) is the karaoke market, where the more 'sophisticated' synths would be used by karaoke artists to create the MIDI files that then get shipped off to be 'played back' on the karoake-friendly devices, such as TG-series.
The DX9 was Yamaha's way of marketing to those schools in a fashion that would imply affordability, while giving access to the 'professional' tools that commercial musicians would use (DX7). The idea being, the student starts off on the DX9/DX100/DX21 and then - when they graduate and can eventually afford it - upgrades at a later date to the DX7.
They used this strategy very successfully for decades, to expand their market and capture devoted fans of their instruments. Even today, Yamaha's product lines are designed to be affordable to students, and eventually when those students become professionals, provide a 'guided upgrade path' to the higher end products.
It was quite common back then to produce the flagship instrument at high price for professionals, studios, etc, then once it became popular creating a demand, follow with a cheaper line. Happened with other brands too: Roland made a fortune with cut down versions of the D50.
Something you have to consider if you want short fixed length opcodes. I guess you could call it "Macro Op Fission."
All synths should have (at least) 8-step envelopes like the CZ series.
Full multi-timbral hardware synths also seem rare these days.
Awesome. This is a dream come true for somewhere between 2 to 3 people all over the world.
Though a free FM softsynth like Dexed is hard to beat for cost and convenience; and on the hardware side, Korg's opsix has a great front panel with knobs and sliders for programming, while their Volca FM2 is a nice 6-voice mini-synth that can play DX7 patches.